


the delicate, unfixed condition of love

by Keturagh



Series: False Fruit [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Elf cavorting in the lake, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn, Solavellan Hell, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21970945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keturagh/pseuds/Keturagh
Summary: And then something that had not happened before, in all their small movements around the corners of each other’s beckoning, happened.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel/Female Lavellan, Solas/Lavellan, Solasmance - Relationship, solavellan - Relationship
Series: False Fruit [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579504
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	the delicate, unfixed condition of love

**“and so the delicate, unfixed condition of love, the treacherous body/the unsettling state of creation and how we have damaged - /isn’t one a suitable lens through which to see another:/filter the body, filter the mind, filter the resilient land” (chronic, D.A. Powell, Chronic)**

\--

How perfectly the lake mirrored the sky above. How delicate the unbroken brush of clouds against the mirror-like surface of the water; too cold to keep life? Yet, no — even here, he could feel the stirrings of creatures pressing against the Veil from both sides. The simplest means of survival: desire, fear, but among them all, the strongest, perhaps not surprisingly, rest. An unsullied presence of simple, animal hibernation overtaking the threads of metaphysical energy defining this winter landscape.

And then she came from behind him, passed him, completely naked, holding her breasts in her arms, and all he saw was a flash of the curve of her back sloped down as she hurtled from the shore.

Between her mounting screech and the laughter behind him, he felt the peace of this place flee.

He snorted.

“AhhhHHHH,” she groaned, again, having made the serious miscalculation of pausing halfway through her immersion.

“Just get it over with,” he reasoned, close enough to see the vulgar gesture she flicked his way. He couldn’t help but chuckle, stealing a glance over his shoulder to see that Varric and the others had not seen. Most of them were still doubled-over in laughter, but Cassandra was frozen with her hands over her mouth, mortified. She spread her arms out to him, then to her Inquisitor, looking far more helpless than could possibly be comfortable for a woman well established in both dignity and fortitude.

He shrugged.

Cassandra’s face dropped further yet; abysmal, clearly already mapping the funeral of her divinity manifest upon this earth.

Pangara writhed in the water, grasped her nose between her fingers, and collapsed into the water fully with an obscene splash of the icy lake. He scrambled up, out of the way of the wave that rocked to shore.

“Chuckles, grab a pint!” Varric called from further up the shore. Solas half-turned with a measure of reluctance from watching where she’d dove and shook his head, giving a disarming smile and a small wave of his hand.

Then she burst back to the surface, gasping, and he heard the Stone child snicker softly as his gaze, entirely by chance, whipped back to where she emerged from the water.

She spat a mouthful of glacial cool and gasped, then gulped again, and he stepped forward, alarmed.

But then she laughed. Held her stomach, the Anchor flickering reflections of nebulous green luminescence off the sunrise-pink surface of the water. And she stumbled, and her feet must have fled from beneath her because she dunked again and the party behind him roared with new laughter, and only when she crawled back to shore did Cassandra rush forward with her cloak and cover the Herald - so newly titled, so newly castled - as she shivered and choked on her own laughter.

“And that’s how — every winter, when the ice first broke, we would summit the hills nearest the — but, _good Creators_ , it was never that _cold_ —” she devolved into a shivering mess, unable to speak over Cassandra’s anxious, devoted lashing and her own mirth.

Then she gasped, “Solas, you’re next.”

And he stiffened as the group on the rocks above all turned their eyes to him as one.

“Such a tempting offer,” he measured, sitting back down, slowly, “But it seems I’ve not your courage, Inquisitor.”

“Trying to claim you’ve never _really_ done this to welcome spring, Solas? Not in all your travels…?”

“Not, perhaps, as the Dalish have.”

She ignored his press, as she so often could — he would need to develop a better mechanism for turning her interest — and chose, instead, to pull herself across the rocks to sit beside him.

“Cassandra,” she said, “Asking as the leader of this Inquisition, how important would you say it is for our expert on the Fade to demonstrate some hackneyed Elven behavior and cavort among the wonders of the natural world?”

Cassandra, clearly not expecting to be drawn into this, did not grunt in vexation, as he’d expected, or reprimand their leader’s insensibility.

Instead, she pinked, and turned away, and muttered something under her breath that he couldn’t quite pick up, and scrabbled back up the slope to where the main of their party drank and celebrated their arrival to Skyhold and enjoyed the vistas of his long-ago demesne.

And then something that had not happened before, in all their small movements around the corners of each other’s beckoning, happened. Pangara reached out and touched his cheek. And she murmured, just quiet enough for him, only, to hear, “My loss all the more.” And just as quickly she stood again. And he, very carefully, did not look at her as she threw off the cloak and, to the rise of exclamations loud behind them, once more disturbed the surface of the sky.


End file.
